tical outlandish flowers innumerable. No wonder with more variations than ever were composed there was little waste water. The Frenchman by Rossini. It was decided from the beginning cited him before the tribunals. At first they that some should be won and some lost, and that favored the Englishman, as was intended. The at last all the costs should be cast upon this Frenchman, as Frenchmen always do, shifted his proud Englishman. The whole property of his ground a little, and won the second cause. In adversary amounts not to the sum expended in the third the Englishman had his turn, to prove the maintenance of what he presumed to call his the fairness of processes in Tuscany. Then a rights: a favorite word, Eminence, with those couple of the judges were persuaded to see their islanders. He was a true Englishman, unbending error, and voted on the contrary side. Presently to authority, repulsive to rank, and bearing an more had their eyes opened for them. In vain abominable dash of charcoal on his shoulders, did the proud Englishman hold in contempt the black, black as Satanasso. He would not have variations of the opponent and the judges: in gained his lawsuit even if he had consented to vain, over and over, did he offer tenfold the value pay down the fair market-price, which his proud of the water, supposing the water was the thing stomach would never do. But we are ready, Emiwanted, which the Frenchman had delared he nence, we are ready; for no men alive observe never cared about, having plenty on each side of more strictly the usages of their fathers. We his house. No, this would never serve the pur- hate revolutionary notions, we hate false docpose of those who patted him on the back. His trines : honour and religion, and love of our suit assumed a somewhat different form, term neighbour, is our motto. after term, otherwise it could not easily have been so protracted. Nothing was now left for the proud Englishman but appeal to the last resort; but, just before the defection of the two favorable judges was decided on and arranged, the Court of Appeal in the last resort was purposely suppressed. Such was the fate of the proud Englishman and his waste water.

Legate. I hope, Signor Marchese, that the matter ends here; for you must remember that I have other business in hand.

Scampa. Patience, Eminence, patience! It does not end here, nor could it reasonably. This arrogant infuriated man, this devastator of vines and olives, this substituter of grass and moss for cabbages and onions, was sentenced to construct with efficient masonry a competent reservoir in front and within ten paces of his hall-door. Such a sentence, if such a sentence had been possible against a noble Tuscan, would have broken the heart of Conte Gherardesca, the late proprietor, although he resided there but seldom, and enjoyed but few perhaps of the cabbages and onions so unworthily supplanted. Just punishment for this overbearing pertinacious Englishman! reminding him for ever of what is due to a Roman prince and prime minister; such a diplomatist that he had the honour of serving both his native sovereign the Granduke Ferdinand and the Emperor Napoleon at the same time, enjoying the countenance of each, unsuspected by the other. And a shining countenance it was. Faith of

Bacchus it was an omelet well fried on each side, and enough of it to fatten a Carthusian.

Legate. To what does this tend, Signor Marchese?

Scampa. It tends, Eminence, to prove satis factorily the small regard entertained for Englishmen in other quarters of our Italy: it tends to prove, above all things, their contempt of dignities, and how easily, by the grace of your Eminence, they may be disappointed in their extravagant recourse to litigation. The litigant was condemned to a series of lawsuits for nine years,

Legate. I wish so great a hardship had befallen no better man than the person you describe: but, remember, I am not sitting here to examine the merits of his case. We have our own laws.

Scampa. I call that a happy country whose law is as movable as Easter, and as managable and pleasant as the Carnival. If it is not so in the states of the Church, where upon earth ought it to be? I pay to His Holiness fifteen Roman crowns yearly, for dispensation to eat flesh in Lent.*

Legate. You seem strong and healthy, most Illustrious!

Scampa. Under the blessing of heaven, by paying the fifteen crowns I continue so. If all would do the same their sins would fall off them as the scales fall from a leper. Ling may help to lift a man out of Purgatory; but Roman crowns, legitimate and unclipt, can alone pave the way to Paradise. I am no niggard, no Englishman: right well do I know, and more especially do I acknowledge, that His Holiness is not only an apostle, but a prince, and that His dignity is to be duly supported by all true Christians. I glory in being one; and God forbid I should ever be so straitened in circumstances for want of protection, as to cry out for an abatement. In Tuscany the judges will hear reason, when the wand of the apparitor is tipped with gold and the litigant speaks in French. It is better he should speak it first to Don Neri, who understands it perfectly.

Legate. I do entreat you, Signor Marchese, to come at once to the point.

Scampa. I would gladly, triumphantly, extatically, shed the last drop of my blood for His Holiness; but, ohibo! what is all a man's blood worth when it is robbed of its vital heat, of its menestra, its fry, and its roast? I am a good subject, a good Catholic, true, faithful, vigilant; I am a gallant man, a brave man; but I have my fears.

* A family, however healthy, may obtain it at that price, and some very pious ones do.

There are carbonari everywhere: there is carbon | able at all times, and more amiable at most: and under the chair of His Holiness. A hard blow, if there are seasons when he must inevitably an angry breath, a humiliating indignity, a cruel swear and fight, we may charitably believe that unpaternal. . what am I saying? what am I he follows the law of his nature in so doing; thinking of?.. may. . mercy upon us! may that God made him so; and we must take him .. O holy Virgin avert it! may, alas! set his as we find him. And we shall the more readily footstool in such a blaze, ay, footstool and canopy, do this, if we remark his perfect ease and inpurple and triple crown, as all the tears of your difference what he swears to, and what he fights Eminence, and of the devoted servant at your for. feet, would be insufficient to extinguish.

Legate. What would you have, gentlemen? Biancheria. Eminence! we do not ask more for ourselves, who are Italians, than was graciously conceded to a foreigner.

Legate. The French have it always in their power to do a great deal of mischief; and such is their natural disposition. The tiger in his cage is just as restless as in his wilderness, and his keeper must now and then humour him.

Biancheria. For my part, I have no complaint to make against him: no Frenchman ever carried off any of my pictures.

Legate. Signor Conte! keep your own secret. Do not imply, as your speech would do, that you never had any worth carrying off.

Corazza. Our Italy would rise up in arms against the despoiler and deflowerer. Your Eminence would issue a rescript, an ordinance we are safe. Ah, Signor Conte! not without an inspiration did you remind his Eminence of our Garisenda, and her maternal leaning toward us. Signor Conte and Signor Marchese would melt Saint Peter and persuade Saint Thomas, when they were stubbornest. I am ready to weep.

Legate. At what, Signor Corazza?

Corazza. Ca! at what? it lies beyond expres

sion.

Legate. Well, in this article of weeping we perhaps may help you.

Biancheria. We ask to be protected from no Frenchman upon earth, which would be beyond any reasonable hope, but only from our accursed Englishman, who, by his pertinacity and obduracy, has proved himself to be made of the same paste as the other, and drawn out of the same oven. Like the other, he would rather put in jeopardy three thousand crowns than distribute a few hundreds in charity among the faithful domestics of your Eminence, and their virtuous wives and amiable children. What hearts, ahime! what hearts these English carry with them about Italy! In fact, Eminence, an Englishman closes his fist on these occasions as firmly as if he were boxing. The main difference is, that on these if he is beaten he has the folly to complain, whereas on the other he would be silent if you had beaten him half into a mummy. Knock out an eye, and Scampa. Chancery! we are fresh eggs; we are he gives you his hand; mistake a picture in sell-live oysters; we are swallowed up; the Day of ing it to him, and he delivers you over to the exe-Judgment can not piece us again! If anything cutioner.

Scampa. If not quite that, he makes you give back the money; and thus, blemishing your honour, he leaves an incurable wound in the very centre of the heart.

Corazza (aside). Per Bacco! it grows serious!
Legate. The foreigner threatens . .
All. The assassin!

Legate... to send the Process before the Ruota Criminale at Rome, first submitting it to the Pontifical Chancery.

reasonable had been offered, then indeed who knows? Eminence! only hear the Englishman's proposals! That the pictures should be sent back; true, at the purchaser's charge; but what compensation for losing the sight of our pictures? Pictures that have been hanging in our palaces from time immemorial; pictures that have made men, women, and children, stand breathless under them; pictures that at last were given to the Englishman at his own price; for he would not listen to reason. I told him I had a presentiment of heartbreaking: I clasped my hands: I lifted up my eyes imploringly to the ceiling, until my sighs carried down a cobweb from a highth of twelve braccie, and almost blinded me. I made no complaint; I bring no action for damages. There is one Scampa in the world; only one; here he stands.

Legate. Gently, good Signor Marchese! such hard thumps on the exterior may produce an effect no less fatal. I should apprehend ossification and aneurism. We must bear with human infirmity. All nations have their customs, all individuals their privileges and foibles. As the English fight best upon the ocean, it is probable and presumable that they see best with their heads under water; which opinion some of the pictures bought by them on dry land, at enormous prices, for their national gallery, seem to confirm. Certainly they little know our usages: but they know incomparably more about theoretical law than about its practical administration. Per- Biancheria. Think! figure it! Eminence! he haps, as you suggest, they are somewhat too indif- offered us our pictures again, with only one-half ferent to the deferential delicacy of its domestic of the money! Could a Jew do worse? The Poncourtesies. Knowing the weaknesses to which, tifical Chancery and the Ruota Criminale would as children of Adam, we all are liable, I would never tribulate gallant men in this guise. We not animadvert on them severely, nor prejudge must go to Rome with sacks in our great coats: them. True it is, the Frenchman is more soci- | and the judges there can smell silver from gold

through a Russia-leather portmanteau, mix it as you will. Here in Bologna the judges are our neighbours, and act like neighbours. No pride, no fastidiousness: they have patience and hear reason. Only one word from your Eminence, and all stands well.

Legate. Reason too is heard at Rome.

Scampa. It goes by the Diligence to the banker's, and (Santa Maria!) makes but a short stay there.

Biancheria. Yes, Eminence! at Rome too they hear reason and have patience: but they require more reason from us, and more patience. Sacks! Eminence! sacks and sacks, Eminence! exterminated mountains! Mexico, Peru, Cordilleras!

Corazza. Is money chaff, Signor Marchese? Signor Conte! is money swept off with the beard and suds at the barber's? To me it does not seem so. I am a poor man, but honest. I work, I work hard; ca! if anyone knew it!

Legate. At what do you work, most respectable Signor Corazza, my most worshipful master?

for dinner: Signor Perotti, Signor Flavio, your Eminence must know him, padrone of the Pelican, says, Leave that to me." Now Signor Flavio speaks English as well as milord Beron or milord Scacchesperro. "Do you want cash, sir? I will take any bill upon London, two months, three months." O the ingratitude of the canaglia! The pictures are given; thrown away, (do I speak well, Signor Marchese?), packed up, sealed at the custom-house, sent off; Signor Flavio goes along with them, loses his business, his rest, his peace of mind, crosses the Appennines, as Annibal did, and reaches Florence, eviscerated, exossated, with nine great packages! nine! the treasures of Bologna !

Biancheria. We lie near the woods, or we never could have given the empty cases for the money we gave the pictures at.

Scampa. I doubt, after all, whether they will cover the carpenter's bill.

Corazza. Be tranquil, Signor Marchese! I have calculated that they certainly will, if he waits (as usual) a reasonable while for the payment.

Scampa. It was a great inconvenience to me: I made a great sacrifice: I thought of building a palace with the planks. Will your Eminence just look over the ground-plan?

Legate. Prodigiously magnificent elevation ! Blessed Saints!

Scampa. One might imagine that a little of the timber would be left. Quite the contrary. I have ruined the way through my estate by the carriage of supplementary loads; and I should not have regretted it if I could have given satisfaction. I am ready to do the like again for anyone who thinks more liberally.

Corazza. At my business; day after day; all day long. O the life! to gain a crown-piece after years and years, and many and many! To stand and stand, and sigh and sigh, with my hands before me; now straight down, now across; sad variety! Now looking at one Virgin, now at another; now at this Bambino, now at that; never minding me; tiring my heart and tearing it, and gnawing it, summer and winter, spring and autumn; while others are in villa! hosiers and hatters, who can not distinguish a picture from a counterpane, a Porporato from a Pievano. Ca! and these people get more money than they can spend: what livers and brains! what capons! what trout! Their wine comes from twenty miles Biancheria. It must be by particular favour, off; cospetto! One keeps his civetta, another his and with strong recommendations, that an Enbilliard-table, another his . . what not! Here glishman ever enters my house again. My stock am I! no wine, no billiard, no pallone, no laugh- of timber was small': however, if it had pleased ing, no noise! The very carts in the streets His Beatitude the Holiness of our Lord to equip grumble to be in it at such a season. All I possess a galley or two against the Turks or Greeks, I had of the country is a grillo in a cage of straw. The wherewithall at his service. Now, now indeed, blessed Saint who lost her eyes.. if she can be said to have lost them when she carried them in a dish.. suffered less than mine did when I lost my Guido.

not a stick is left me! not a thorn, not a dead leaf on the floor: the packages took all.

Corazza. Men of humble condition must be cautious in their resentments. My temper is for

Legate. Have you nothing of the kind remain-giving; my heart is large; I am ready to press ing?

Corazza. Providence never abandons the faithful. A Ludovico . . pure, sincere, intact; purest, sincerest, intactest.. but alas! no menestra in pentola; no more menestra than if there were no rice-ground in Lombardy. This I call enduring fatigue, Signor Marchese! This I call sweating, Signor Conte! This I call tribulation, Eminence! Your Eminence can feel all this for us poor people in the trade. Look now! look now! only look! Here comes an Englishman to the Pelican; a milord; a real milord of London. The fame of the finest pieces in the world reaches him on the steps; not mine; I do not say mine; but the pieces of Signor Marchese and Signor Conte, rimbombing through the universe. He hardly asks

my enemy to it again when he sees his error.

Legate. He fancies he has already seen it, my most ornamented friend and worthy patron! His correspondent at Florence assures me, on the authority of the whole Academy, that he has been defrauded.

Biancheria. If this gentleman is a gentleman of the law, he may lie legally: but if he acts merely as a friend, and in private, he acts insidiously. What gentleman in Italy ever took upon himself the business of another, where he fancied the other had been imprudent and might lose by that imprudence, whether life or property? The English alone are discontented with their own dangers, and run into those of other people. They pursue thieves; they mount upon conflagra

tions.

Instead of joining the stronger, they join | the weaker, subverting the order of things. Even dogs and wolves know better.

Scampa. I am ruined by them; this is all I pretend to know of their doings. Since I sold them my pictures, I am infested and persecuted and worried to death by duns. They belabor and martellate my ears worse than the terza rima of Dante, the next taking up the rhyme of the last. I am not a dealer in pictures: I only sell when anyone takes a fancy to this or that; and merely to show that we in Bologna are as condescending and polite to strangers as the people of Rome or Florence.

Legate. Very proper; but this double baptism of pictures, this dipping of old ones in the font again, and substituting a name the original sponsor never dreamt of giving, this, methinks, Signor Marchese! under correction! is somewhat questionable and exceptionable.

Scampa. Under the correction of your Eminence, bending myself most submissively, I have as much right to call my pictures by what appellation I please as my house-dog. He whose son has been christened by the name of Tommaso, may deem it more pleasurable to his ear, or more conducive to his welfare, or more appertaining to the dignity of his beloved heir, to designate him by that of Pietro or Giovanni. Again, I have as much right to ask a thousand crowns as a hundred. Asking does not cut purses nor force open bankers' desks. Beside, have I ever transgressed by laying claim to infallibility? Only one upon earth is infallible; and he not in pictures: it is only in things that nobody in this world can comprehend.

Legate. Piously and judiciously spoken. Scampa. Eminence! I am liable to errors; am frail; I am a man: we are all of us dust; we are all of us ashes; here to-day, there to-morrow: but I stick to my religion; I wear my honour next my heart. I should like to catch this Englishman by twilight: I should like to hear how he would answer an honest man to his face. No subterfuges with me. Accidents have happened; malaria; judgments. Many have fallen sick by holding their noses too close to the ground, like dogs in the grotto at Naples yonder.

Legate. Be calm, Signor Marchese! Scampa. My blood rises against oppression and injustice. These proud Englishmen shall never govern us. We are under the Church; God be praised! We are under his blessed Saints and your Eminence. Englishmen! what are Englishmen? In their ships they may do something. Give me one, visage to visage in the shaven field, and, capperi! he should soon see who was before him: ay, capperi! should he. Uh! uh! I almost crack my teeth with my courage.

Legate. Spare them! spare them! good Signor Marchese! they are worth their weight in gold at your age. Let us respect our veterans, so sadly thinned by the enemy.

Legate. You must feel it very comfortable.
Scampa. It boils within me.

Legate. Let it; let it; better within than without. Surely it is applicable to pleasanter purposes than broils.

Scampa. Stains upon honour . .

Legate. May be covered with blood more easily than washed out with it. You are calmer, Signor Conte! Let me remark to you, then, that the Englishman in question has sent to me an attestation on a certain picture, purporting to bear the seal of our Academy: this seal is declared by one of our own Academicians (now in Florence) to be a forgery.

All. A traitor! a traitor! a traitor to his country!

Biancheria. The Englishman himself forged it. Corazza. The English are capable. I never saw people write with such ease and fluency.

Scampa. Very great forgers; very notorious. Many are hanged for it every year in London; some of the most respectable persons in the whole nation, who spend several thousand dollars a year; milords, bankers, bishops.

Biancheria. Bishops! more shame upon them! Ours in Italy are long-dips; four-and-twenty to the pound; in England they are as substantial as sausages. What the devil should they forge but their credentials?

Scampa. I said, and I repeat it, many English are hanged for it every year; not one Italian. Lord Kenyon, the greatest judge in the kingdom, declared it lawful against an enemy: now Catholics are enemies in the eye of the Anglican Church, and the English laws acknowledge and act upon it; therefore, on their own principles, we may fairly and justifiably be guilty of it, at our good pleasure. Not that we ever are.

Biancheria. A secretary, by inadvertency, may affix a seal to a wrong paper. We cannot look to these bagatelles: we cannot light the taper for all our letters: we have extensive correspondences: a good deal of money comes yearly by this way into the Legations.

Scampa. An easy quiet liberality; some slight preference to the native; a little more regard to his testimony who is a Christian, than to a Quaker's, a Turk's, a Lutheran's, an Anabaptist's, a Free-mason's, may benefit the individual, consolidate the government, and calm those uneasinesses and ranklings which have kept our wretched country

Biancheria, whispering to him. Ohibo! take heed! diamene!

Scampa. Wretched, until the arrival of your Eminence, by perpetual insurrections. Only two years ago (horrible to think of!) Cardinal Rivarola was shot in his carriage. God knows why. Mystery hangs over everything here below. Idle men are seen about, ready to be hired: their work requires but short instruments and short warning.

Legate. Pooh! pooh! Signor Marchese! never Scampa. I have the blood of youth in my veins. fear them; we will watch over you. Government

can pay them best: they are idle or at work as we judge proper. Englishmen have long purses, but never hire any help in their anger.

Corazza. Economical indeed! meanspirited creatures!

Biancheria. But they carry sticks, and confound distinctions with them.

Scampa. Bloody rogues are left yet in the Legations; and not all of them on the mountains. Have a care, Eminence! they pretend to love their country. Such folks are always dangerous: their whistle is heard farther than any. We have seen, O Christ! O holy Virgin! . . Surgeon's work does not stand well. I weep at thinking. my eyes overflow. . I kiss the feet that represent His Holiness.

who recommended these rascals and their rubbish, has unquestionably his profits.

Corazza. And why should not we have ours? We who rub nothing out at all, and put little

on.

Legate... Except in price, most adorned sir. Biancheria. I would not wish my observations to transpire. If the scourers at Florence go on as they have been going on lately, the collections at the gallery and at Pitti will be fit only for the Committee of Taste in London; and the Granduke must have recourse to us for what is unsold in our corridors.

Legate. Sorry am I to understand that so zealous a protector, and so liberal an encourager of the Arts, has fallen among thieves.

Scampa. However he has purchased some fine pictures. Old pencils are redhot iron to young fingers: all are burnt at first.

Biancheria. Unhappily, the two purest and most perfect works of Raffael are transferred from Tuscany to Bavaria: his Bindo Altoviti and his Tempi Madonna.

Legate. Signor Marchese! you overpower me. And, Signor Conte! you also at my other! nay, nay, in the name of . . Cazzo! you go too far. I do intreat you to rise up from my feet: your lips make them too hot: they do indeed. Gentlemen, the pleasure of your company has almost caused me to forget that you do me the honour of consulting with me on business of im- Legate. Raffael has been surpassed in portraits portance. Forgery is really an ugly thing, in my by Titian and Giorgione. But Tuscany may weep view of the subject. Swindling sounds indifferent- for ever over her loss in the Bindo Altoviti, which ly. The Academicians of Florence have formally I have often seen in the palace where it was and unanimously decided that your pictures are painted. Towns, fortresses, provinces, are won, not only no originals, but are wretched copies. | recovered, restored, repurchased: kings will keep Fifteen names, the names of all present, are subscribed to the declaration, signed by the president, the senator Alessandri! "Siamo di concorde avviso che il primo sia una copia mediocre, &c.: che il secondo appertenga ad un debole imitatore della scuola Bolognese; e gli ultimi due sieno fatti da un cattivo seguace," &c.

Biancheria. Eminence! let the Academicians of Florence look at the pictures that the most liberal and intelligent of our Italian princes (I mean secular; no offence to our Lord and Master His Beatitude) has bought in their own city, and under their own eyes. How happens it that he has friends about him who recommend to him the purchase, at many thousand crowns, of pieces not worth five figs? Domenichinos! Salvators, Leonardos, Murillos! Is the Guido in the Tribuna any Guido at all? Would your Eminence give three crowns for it, out of the frame?

Raffaels; kings alone, or higher dignitaries, should possess them.

Scampa. He who would sell his Raffael would sell his child.

Biancheria. Cospetto! thirty.

Scampa. Or his father.

Biancheria. Cappari! All, all, to the last. Legate. Leonardos, Correggios, rare, very rare: but only one genius ever existed who could unite what is most divine on earth with what is most adorable in heaven. He gives sanctity to her youth, and tenderness to the old man that gazes on her. He purifies love in the virgin's heart; he absorbs it in the mother's.

Corazza. Many allow him the preference over our school.

Legate. Ca! ca! ca! your School! an immondezzaio to a Sistine Chapel.

Scampa. Eminence! in Rome, protected by popes and cardinals, he reached perfection.

Scampa. Their Domenichino in the same Tribuna, did Domenichino ever see it? However, it Legate. Protected! He walked among saints is better than a real work of his in the Palazzo and prophets, their herald upon earth. What a Pitti, which the Granduke's purveyors bought for man! what a man! his shadow in our path will him at the price of fifteen hundred louis. Emi- not let lies pass current, nor flattery sink into the nence! would you give fifty crowns for it? Our breast. No, Marchese! At Rome he thought he Lord would never have talked a half-minute with could embellish what is most beautiful in sentisuch a Magdalen as that: he would have thrown ment: at Florence, until the scourers brought her pot of pomatum in her face. their pestilence into the city, his genius soared in all its light angelic strength. At Florence he was the interpreter of Heaven: at Rome he was only the conqueror of Michel-Angelo: he had left Paradise, he had entered Eden.

Corazza. Under favour, how happens it that they recommend to the Granduke restorers and cleaners who never learnt anything of the art, and never attempted it on their own dirt and rags?

Scampa. How happens it that the finest pictures in the world have been ruined within these two years? The friend of His Imperial Highness,

Scampa. In your Rome the great Florentine taught him dignity.

Legate. Strange mistake! Was ever painter so